{"id":14391,"date":"2015-02-18T05:21:13","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T02:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tentaclii.wordpress.com\/?p=14391"},"modified":"2015-02-18T05:21:13","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T02:21:13","slug":"the-boom-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2015\/02\/18\/the-boom-years\/","title":{"rendered":"The boom years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lovecraft grew up in age when a boy could have a complete chemistry laboratory in the cellar.  For it he could acquire all sorts of hazardous chemicals, and from it he could pour all sorts of gaseous fumaroles, without causing a SWAT team to camp out on his front lawn&#8230;  <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I would give my mother and grandfather no peace till they had fitted me up a chemical laboratory in the basement of our home and there I dabbled in reagents and precipitates from March 1899 onwards, ploughing feverishly through such chemical primers as The Young Chemist&#8221; (<em>Selected Letters<\/em> II, p.109)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As a boy Lovecraft even had a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2014\/08\/30\/nuclear-lovecraft\/\">small nuclear device<\/a>.  The cultural expectation that intelligent boys would safely play with home chemistry laboratories, and could even handle a few pinches of radioactive matter continued even into the 1950s.  When <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techienews.co.uk\/9723830\/world-dangerous-toy-gilbert-atomic-energy-lab-goes-display-museum\/\">a $50 toy chemistry kit<\/a> could still come stocked with four different types of <em>real<\/em> uranium&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/tentaclii\/oldimages\/gilbert-atomic-energy-lab-720x340.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/tentaclii\/oldimages\/gilbert-atomic-energy-lab-720x340.jpg?w=529\" alt=\"Gilbert-Atomic-Energy-Lab-720x340\" width=\"529\" height=\"250\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-14392\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My essay on &#8220;The Colour out of Space&#8221;, in my book <em>Historical Context 2<\/em> goes into more detail about the what Lovecraft could have known about radioactivity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lovecraft grew up in age when a boy could have a complete chemistry laboratory in the cellar. For it he &hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2015\/02\/18\/the-boom-years\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-context"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}